Women of the House (and Senate)

November 28, 2006 | When the 110th Congress starts work in January, it will include more women than ever before—in greater numbers, in more powerful positions, with many congresswomen propelled to office by female-focused fundraising efforts. Over the past decade, both the number of female politicians in national office and women’s financial participation in campaigns have steadily increased. But women are still under-represented both as candidates and donors—just 16 percent of the new Congress will be female, and women were responsible for contributing only 27 percent of this past election’s larger campaign donations, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

“One sees the playing field has gotten a lot more level, but has yet to be completely level,” said Barbara Goldsmith, the author of four best-selling books on the lives of women and a supporter of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Goldsmith, who met Clinton when they served together on the Commission for the Celebration of Women in American History, contributed $4,100 to Clinton’s 2006 re-election campaign. “Hillary’s gender played no part in my decision, but it’d be ridiculous to say there isn’t a resistance to women in Congress,” Goldsmith said.

“Nancy Pelosi talks about not the glass ceiling but the marble ceiling, just because it is so much harder to break through,” said Drew Hammill, spokesman for the Democratic congresswoman from California who will become the first female speaker of the House in January.

While Pelosi and Clinton have joined the ranks of the nation’s most powerful politicians, women’s political advocates despair of the slowing rate of women being elected to state offices—a pipeline to federal positions. The few women stepping up to run for national office face the enormous fundraising and name-building challenges that confront any new candidate.

“Now it is not so much sexism that stands in the way of electing women,” said Ramona Oliver, communications director of EMILY’s List, a political action committee that exclusively supports female Democratic candidates who favor abortion rights. “The two biggest obstacles are incumbency and finances.”

New candidates, as a rule, have a hard time raising money and getting elected. Even in this year of political turnover, incumbents carried 94 percent of House races and 79 percent of Senate races. Incumbents on average raised more than four times as much as their challengers.

Once a female candidate receives her party’s nomination, she is no less able to raise funds than her male counterparts, according to 2006 results. In fact, statistics compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that female candidates in 2006 raised more on average than men. Female incumbents raised an average of $2.2 million this election cycle compared to an average of $1.6 million raised by male incumbents. Female challengers raised an average of $580,000, while male challengers raised an average of $460,000. However, female candidates remain firmly in the minority—women made up 16 percent of incumbent federal candidates this year and 17 percent of challengers.

Because there were so few female candidates in November—244 women ran for Congress, compared to 1,232 men—the fundraising averages for female candidates can be affected by the spoils of a single candidate. For her ’06 re-election to the U.S. Senate, Clinton, building up a war chest for a probable 2008 presidential run, raised nearly $50 million, which was $23 million more than the next biggest (male) fundraiser in the nation. Clinton’s astounding haul ratcheted up the fundraising averages for candidates across the nation.

The scarcity of female candidates—and their full campaign coffers—is due in large part to the demographics of the congressional districts in which they run, said Barbara Palmer, a political scientist at American University’s Women and Politics Institute. Women candidates who win tend to come from the wealthiest congressional districts, as well as those that are urban and racially diverse, Palmer said. She encourages political parties to have their female candidates target these districts. “The good news is there might be more opportunities in districts that women can do well in. The bad news is there are still a lot of districts where they won’t,” she said.

Activists working to get more women elected to federal office say that money fails female candidates early on in their campaigns, when candidates must shell out a lot of cash to establish footing in their districts. “Once women get in there and start raising it, they do well. The role it plays is an early role,” said Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project, which trains women to run for office. “Politics has been a boys’ system. It’s been a masculine system.”

Because of this, women tend to start out outside of male-dominated “networks of money,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s the difference between going to the Rotary for your money and going to the NEA (teachers union),” she said.

Raising early money for female candidates is the principle behind EMILY’s List— EMILY stands for “Early Money is Like Yeast” (it raises dough)—and its Republican counterpart, the Wish List. In the 2006 election cycle, EMILY’s List spent almost $19 million in federal elections and funneled $11 million of individual contributions to candidates, according to the organization’s statistics.

While EMILY’s List makes an effort to garner contributions from female campaign contributors to female candidates, women continue to give smaller and less frequent political contributions than do men, on average. In the 2006 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 27 percent of federal campaign contributions greater than $200 came from women—up from 22 percent in 1990. There’s no telling how many women gave smaller contributions; the Federal Election Commission itemizes only those greater than $200.

The challenge that candidates and interest groups face in raising money from women is getting them in the habit of political giving, said Georgetown University political scientist Clyde Wilcox. “Women of equal levels of income [to men] will contribute less than men,” he said. “What women candidates are trying to do is to convince [female donors] to give the biggest contributions.”

Women tend to give money to—and vote for—Democrats, regardless of the candidate’s gender, Wilcox said. In 2006, women provided 32 percent of the funding for Democratic congressional candidates and 25 percent of the funding for Republican congressional candidates, according to data collected by the Center.

Similarly, the majority of female officeholders are Democrats. The new Congress will include 87 women: 61 Democrats and 26 Republicans.

In the end, Wilcox said, voters will cast their ballots based more on political party than gender. “Voters are looking for a candidate who will represent them,” he said. “They could be a woman, or they could be a man.”

In Arizona, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords out-raised and defeated the Republican candidate, Randy Graf, for the U.S. House seat of retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican. Rodd McLeod, a spokesman for Giffords’s campaign, said her gender was not a main issue on voters’ minds. “What meant a lot more to voters…was her being a young, energetic and serious politician,” he said. But still, he added, gender has undeniably been a factor in Arizona’s political history. “Arizona has sent three women to Congress in its history,” McLeod said. “It has to be an issue.”

Elizabeth Patterson, who owns a Tucson temp agency, gave $1,450 to Giffords’s campaign. “I felt that she was the most qualified and had such a bright future ahead of her…and she’s a woman,” Patterson said. “I’d like to think that I’d contribute to the best person, and it’s also nice having a woman.”

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